Memphis Social is an exhibition and performance event that hopes to broaden the definitions of a socially engaged art happening. Memphis is a place that becomes universal in its specifics. The wider world knows the importance of Memphis as the birthplace of the Blues; yet locally, the blues still live there. Its being the location of Martin Luther King’s assassination is important to the wider public, but locally, the struggle for racial and class equality still continues. Such specifics of time and tide that comprise a place like Memphis get freighted downriver and into common knowledge, until the city itself becomes a larger, more universal metaphor, like Woodstock or Gettysburg, Waterloo or Bethlehem.

Memphis Social is not ostensibly about Memphis, but the city as a determined social environment plays a big part in providing a rich ground for some of the social/aesthetic directions in the exhibition. Through specifically oriented performances and artwork, Memphis Social will not attempt to recreate “the city” or re-enact “the social” but will deeply consider the idea that different interpretations of society still exist, in both specific and universal ways.